A dark time of FOSS video/audio chat?

I used arch linux more than one year but this is my first post. Hope you have some ideas for me.

A kind of funny that after some updating a few days ago, I cannot use video/audio chat with free softwares anymore. (XMPP/JINGLE)

1. The Pidgin does not have media. The packager disables it due to incompatibility.

2. The Empathy works very bad. I tested with my friend, who used another distro of linux, and also used Empathy. The audio is good, but I can see her, and she cannot see me.

3. And then we tried gajim. The Gajim seems has been patched by packager for farstream. I am pretty sure the farstream is installed. But the audio and video button are gray, and they still says "requires farstream". My friend used another distro, and it still says "requires farsight".

4. And then I tried Jitsi. Jitsi works extremely bad in Gnome3, and I even could hardly open its window sometime, so I did not tried it more.

I feel very sad. If you have any idea about any video/audio chat solution, or have any idea about the softwares above, please help.

Re: A dark time of FOSS video/audio chat?

Re: A dark time of FOSS video/audio chat?

So you're sad - but let's be objective here, more detailed, and more thorough:

nana03435 wrote:

1. The Pidgin does not have media. The packager disables it due to incompatibility.

And you've now discovered why:

nana03435 wrote:

Well, it seems that the farsteam is definitely not compatible with pidgin. I could not compile it in ABS when I enabled the video and audio feature.

Post the build output - "I could not compile it" is a waste of time.

nana03435 wrote:

2. The Empathy works very bad. I tested with my friend, who used another distro of linux, and also used Empathy. The audio is good, but I can see her, and she cannot see me.

How is this "very bad"? Audio and video both work for you, so isn't it a problem with your friend's distro?

nana03435 wrote:

3. And then we tried gajim. The Gajim seems has been patched by packager for farstream. I am pretty sure the farstream is installed. But the audio and video button are gray, and they still says "requires farstream". My friend used another distro, and it still says "requires farsight".

Again, check upstream. This may be a known bug, or a new one that you should report.

nana03435 wrote:

4. And then I tried Jitsi. Jitsi works extremely bad in Gnome3, and I even could hardly open its window sometime, so I did not tried it more.

Run it from the command line, check for error output.

More generally - you are far more likely to get effective help here if you show that you're making an effort. Posting a list of stuff that doesn't work is more or less pointless.

Re: A dark time of FOSS video/audio chat?

2. The Empathy works very bad. I tested with my friend, who used another distro of linux, and also used Empathy. The audio is good, but I can see her, and she cannot see me.

How is this "very bad"? Audio and video both work for you, so isn't it a problem with your friend's distro?

Now I'm struggling to find the blog post where I read it but anyway, video chat on Empathy was generally considered to be broken until only recently. If your friend's distro is not using the latest version of Empathy, then the problem is on his side.